Treat Hemorrhoids Naturally:
Diet, Juicing, and Exercise
Destroy Hemorrhoids Now!
Treat hemorrhoids naturally by making dietary and lifestyle changes. They is absolutely necessary if the healing is to last.
Most treatments only relieve hemorrhoids; they don't cure them.
The only real cure for hemorrhoids is preventing them in the first place or preventing them from recurring once you have successfully treated an outbreak.
To prevent the recurrence of hemorrhoids, you must prevent constipation and all the pressure and strain on your rectal veins that go with it. How? Change. Change what you eat and drink and how often you move your body - that's right, exercise!
There are two keys to hemorrhoid prevention: dietary changes and lifestyle changes.
Dietary Changes
High-Fiber Foods
Low-Fiber and Other Foods to Avoid
Fiber Supplements
Why Water Matters
Juicing to Prevent Hemorrhoids
Lifestyle Changes
Dietary Changes
Making dietary changes as part of your hemorrhoids home treatment means eating more high-fiber foods, avoiding low-fiber and other nutritionally empty foods, and drinking more water.
High-Fiber Foods That Can Help Prevent
Constipation and Hemorrhoids
In his groundbreaking book Get Healthy Now!: A Complete Guide to Prevention, Treatment, and Healthy Living, author and alternative health practitioner Gary Null describes the fiber in our food as a"[S]uper janitorial service for our intestines, keeping them free of hazardous substances, including some powerful cancer-causing chemicals, that may enter our bodies." (p. 35)
Fiber, he explains, scrubs the walls of our colon and bowels, moving food through our system more quickly and reducing the time toxins spend inside our body.
Fiber helps prevent hemorrhoids by keeping stools soft, so they pass through and empty more easily.
What types of high-fiber foods serve us best in hemorrhoid prevention? Think "whole" foods: "Whole" means the food is in its natural state, such as a fruit or vegetable, and has not been processed:
- Fresh fruits, raw and with their skin on whenever possible
- Fresh vegetables, especially green leafy vegetables and root vegetables
- Whole grains
- Beans
Fresh fruits: Apples (which have been called "the perfect food" because they do so many things for the body), figs, rhubarb, berries, prunes, raisins, and grapes are all great sources of natural fiber.
Fresh vegetables: Potatoes, beets, carrots, and parsnips are all great root vegetables. Asparagus, brussels sprouts, cabbage, collards, broccoli, and kale are all great green leafy vegetables. Cauliflower, corn, and peas are other healthy sources of fiber.
Whole grains: Try oatmeal, brown rice, barley, wheat germ, miller's bran (unprocessed wheat bran), breakfast cereals such as All Bran, Fiber One, and Bran Buds for variety.
Beans: Alternate kidney, navy lima, pinto, lentils, green peas, black beans, black-eyed peas, fava, and chick or garbanzo frequently, and you'll never grow bored with beans.
We have so many food choices that, with mixing and matching, we could literally never eat the same meal twice and still enjoy healthy, balanced, fiber-rich, delicious meals.
In Foods That Heal
,
alternative
health pioneer Dr. Bernard Jensen
writes that the following foods are all natural laxatives:- Beets
- Apples
- Radishes
- Flaxseed
- Berries
- Nettle broth
- Cherries
- Apricots
- Buttermilk
Dr. Null writes in Get Healthy Now! that rhubarb is also a great laxative. Further, it has another invaluable property - it breaks apart the crystals that form around joints and cause joint pain.
The Centers for Disease Control website has a fun and enlightening interactive tool, Analyze My Plate, that allows you to fill a plate with your typical breakfast, lunch, or dinner and then have the site analyze it for how well it meets dietary goals. It's a great visual tool for really grasping what a calorically balanced, fiber-rich meal looks like on your plate. Try it!
How much fiber To eat?
The answer is, "It depends." Null recommends 1-2 ounces or 40-60 grams per day. In its 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (to be updated in 2010), the Department of Agriculture recommends that we consume 14 grams of fiber for every 1000 calories that we eat. For the average recommended diet of 2000 calories (which varies based on age, weight, gender, and activity level), that means we should be consuming about 28 grams per day.Increase gradually
If you do not consume fiber regularly now, incorporating it into your diet should be a gradual process. In Natural Prescriptions, Robert Giller, M.D., writes that a sudden onslaught of roughage to your system can lead to diarrhea. He recommends increasing your consumption of fruits and vegetables gradually over the course of one to two weeks. One system to follow is to add a new high-fiber food to your diet and at the same time eliminate a low-fiber or processed food.Gradually eliminate white sugar, white flour, and all processed foods from your diet. Eat whole foods.
Caution: If you suffer from any kind of chronic disease, consult with your doctor before changing your diet.
Change the way you shop for groceries
Think local; think green. Buy from Farmer's Markets whenever possible. The food is fresher, it's generally cheaper, and buying local benefits the environment by reducing the volume of long distance shipments of food.Also, learn to shop on the outer aisles of the store. Fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy - most of the good things you should be putting into your shopping cart, are on the outer aisles.
Chew your food thoroughly, and give your digestive system a break
Another change your digestive tract will fully appreciate - learn to chew your food until it's mush. It will digest far more quickly, and your body will eliminate it with much less stress or strain.Top of the page
Low-Fiber and Other Foods to Avoid
Low-fiber foods add a lot of calories to your plate but very little nutritional value. Worse, most of them constipate us (makes sense given that they're not the fuels that a high-powered engine like our body needs to operate properly).Avoid:
- Alcohol
- Coffee
- Tea
- For some people, dairy foods, such as milk and cheese (food allergies stress the body)
- Nuts
- Cheese
- Fried foods
- Ice cream
- Sweets and other refined sugars
- White flour-based foods, including white breads, cookies, cakes, and pies, and other simple carbs
- Processed foods
- Sodas
- Iron supplements
- Some antidepressants
- Some painkillers
- Some antacids
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Fiber Supplements
If you're like most people and don't get enough of the daily recommended amount of fiber in your diet (14 grams for every 1000 calories), consider taking fiber supplements. Over-the-counter fiber supplements help keep stools soft, eliminating constipation and the hemorrhoids it causes.Unlike laxatives, you can take fiber supplements, such as Metamucil and Citrucel, daily. It's critical that you consume 6-8 glasses of water each day when taking fiber supplements. Because the supplements swell the stool in your digestive system, if you're not drinking enough water to soften the stool and move it along, your symptoms will actually worsen.
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Why Water Matters
Speaking of water. Drink 6-8 glasses of fluids daily to help keep stools soft. Water is always best, but other fluids are OK, except for alcohol and caffeinated drinks. In Natural Prescriptions, Robert Giller, M.D., recommends a nifty trick for making sure you drink your water requirement.Start with 8 pennies in your pocket each morning. Each time you consume 8 oz of water, remove one of the pennies. Throughout the day, the jingling of the remaining pennies will remind you to drink your water. By the end of the day, all 8 pennies should be removed.
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Juicing to Prevent Hemorrhoids
The authors of Juicing for Life: A Guide to the Benefits of Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Juicing,
Cherie
Calbom and Maureen Keane,
recommend a juice fast, lasting anywhere from 1 to 5 days for otherwise
healthy adults. They cite the following
juices as particularly
good
cleansers for ending constipation:- Beets
- Cabbage
- Wheatgrass
- Carrot
- Apple
- Celery
- Grapes
- Berries
- Prune
- Pear
- Garlic (for its Vitamin B1 qualities)
- Pineapple contains bromelain
- Berries
- Garlic and onion
- Ginger
- Kale, parsley, spinach, and collards (all provide Vitamin A and folic acid)
- Cantaloupe (provides Vitamin A)
Pineapple, through its bromelain, and cantaloupe, garlic, and onions are all good at preventing the kinds of blood clots that lead to hemorrhoids.
The pigments in berries tone and strengthen the walls of rectal veins. This acts to shrink hemorrhoids and ease the pain they cause.
Calbom and Keane recommend a drink consisting of 4 oz of berry juice blended with 4 oz of fresh apple juice to dilute the strength of the berries.
As you can see, the dietary changes in a hemorrhoids home treatment open up a lot of fun and delicious options you probably never considered. Yes, eating will different!
Click to read about another way to treat hemorrhoids naturally that promises complete healing.
Dietary Changes
High-Fiber Foods
Low-Fiber and Other Foods to Avoid
Fiber Supplements
Why Water Matters
Juicing to Prevent Hemorrhoids
Lifestyle Changes
Top of the page
